another one of those "when the time is right" lessons

I asked a woman to be my sponsor on Tuesday but it's not working out.

I don't fully understand the sponsor relationship. From what I understand, your sponsor is the person that not only answers questions for you, but provides guidance and instruction when you are struggling. I have been told that you want to find a sponsor in Al Anon relatively quickly and how you choose one is that you sit in meetings and listen, and when someone says something that you can really relate to, then you might want to ask them to be your sponsor.

And in my mind I thought, REALLY? That's all it takes? Someone just "says something" and you're supposed to initiate this really difficult and intimate relationship with that person? But I'm trying to work this program as I understand it so I asked a woman that I met at Tuesday's meeting to be my sponsor after about 3 minutes of conversation. She is a lovely person. When I talk with her, I am impressed with her confidence, calmness and assertiveness. She has 22 years in the program and is mother of a teenager. She is everything I thought I wanted in a sponsor.

When you are beginning a sponsor relationship, you're supposed to call that person everyday for the first 30 days so she and I talked yesterday and today.  I realize now that I got exactly what I thought I was supposed to have. Her attitudes and opinions are exactly the same as the religious conservatives in my life that I have to engage with on a daily basis but that I try to distance myself from emotionally. It's just when she says those words, she couches them in "Program" lingo as opposed to religious lingo. Don't get me wrong, she lives the principles and advice that she gives me; there is no hypocrisy here. But she "expects" that I will eventually get to the place that she is at, and to me right now, it feels like it is taking me back to the place where I grew up and to which I hope never to return.

One thing I am learning through this whole process is to trust myself,  that I should not - cannot - do anything unless I feel ready to do it. I was not ready to initiate the sponsor relationship and only did so because that is what I thought I was "supposed" to do. When the time is right, and the right sponsor comes along, I trust that I will know it.